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Uproar Over a Sliced, and Revered, Meteorite

When the American Museum of Natural History opened its gleaming new planetarium two years ago, it gave its highest place of honor to the Willamette meteorite, the pitted, 15 1/2-ton boulder that fell to Earth more than 10 millennia ago.

But unknown to most of its admirers -- or until recently to the Oregon tribe that considers it sacred -- the meteorite has a flat spot at the top, created by museum curators in 1998 when they cut off a 28-pound chunk and traded it to a private collector for half an ounce of Mars.

On Sunday, the collector, Darryl Pitt of New York City, sold a six-inch, 3.4-ounce slice off that chunk for $11,000 at an auction.

A second, smaller piece of a meteorite Mr. Pitt obtained in a trade with the Natural History Museum in London a couple of months ago sold for $3,300.

But the auction dismayed descendants of the Clackamas Indians of Oregon who regard the meteorite as a spiritual union of earth, sky and water.

''Would someone want to auction off a crucifix, one of the holy statues out of the Catholic Church or something like that?'' asked Kathryn Harrison, former chairwoman of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, which includes the Clackamas.

The Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper, took up the cause, accusing the American museum in an editorial on Saturday of showing ''disgraceful stewardship'' of the meteorite. ''If we had our way, it would be heading back on the next westbound freight train,'' the newspaper said.

Dr. David Wheeler, a chiropractic physician in West Linn, Ore., who bought the smaller thumbnail-size piece that weighs a third of an ounce, said he wanted to discuss with the tribal members how he might share his new purchase with them.

''I did it, because I wanted to bring a small part of the meteor back to Oregon,'' Dr. Wheeler said. ''I may end up donating it to them.''

Matt Morgan, a meteorite trader in Colorado who runs the Internet site Mile High Meteorites, bought the larger piece ''because it's a historic American meteorite and one which I don't have,'' he said. ''It's one of the things you always read about in the books.''

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Mr. Morgan said he and two other investors would cut that piece into six or seven smaller pieces, keeping some for themselves and selling the others. ''We'd like to recoup some of the investment we made,'' he said.

The Willamette meteorite, the largest meteorite ever found in the United States, is believed to have originally landed in Canada, and then was pushed by glaciers to Oregon's Willamette Valley thousands of years ago. The American Museum of Natural History bought it in 1906.

Two years ago, after the opening of the museum's Rose Center, the tribes demanded that the meteorite be returned.

The tribes and the museum settled their dispute with an agreement in which the meteorite remains in New York and tribal members can conduct a private ceremony once a year at the center.

But dozens of pieces of the Willamette meteorite were removed over the years and scattered to institutions around the world.

Meteorite collectors trade pieces of space rock the way boys once traded baseball cards: a slice of Mars for a chip of carbonaceous chondrite, a Moon rock for a new meteorite find from the Sahara.

Unlike curators of art or fossils, where great value is placed on the integrity of objects, meteorite curators at major museums participate in the trading game, giving samples of their collection to private collectors in exchange for newly discovered rocks.

''In meteoritics, it's long been a tradition to trade pieces of specimens,'' said Dr. Michael J. Novacek, provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History. Scientists routinely cut meteorites apart for scientific study exchange and send pieces back and forth for different laboratories to analyze.

In exchange for the 28-pound piece of the Willamette meteorite, Mr. Pitt gave a part of the Governador Valadares meteorite, which landed in Brazil in 1958, one of a few known to have come from Mars.

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A version of this article appears in print on February 14, 2002, on Page A00033 of the National edition with the headline: Uproar Over a Sliced, and Revered, Meteorite. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe